Ding: With Dwight Howard, Lakers have magic potion

Aug. 10, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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The Lakers are expected to finalize a trade Friday that brings them Dwight Howard, the only player to have won three consecutive NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards (2009-11). SAM GREENWOOD, GETTY IMAGES

The Lakers are expected to finalize a trade Friday that brings them Dwight Howard, the only player to have won three consecutive NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards (2009-11). SAM GREENWOOD, GETTY IMAGES

Once upon a time, there was a tall yet hunched wise man. He had boring white hair and still the vision to read a crystal ball through the unruly locks of Pau Gasol. He didn't have the exact same gifts as Jerry Buss, Jerry West, Shaquille O'Neal or Kobe Bryant. But he had the patience of a god.

Mitch Kupchak, forever a diehard Yankees fan and a growing Lakers legend in his own right, gets it that sustaining sports greatness over the course of years and generations is about timing – not being satisfied just with hits, appreciating the necessity to connect completely with the barrel of the bat.

Kupchak has done so repeatedly since taking a stinkin' bag of fish in 2000 as a parting West's gift for his ascending protégé. Now Kupchak has brought the Lakers the Dwight Howard Miracle of 2012.

Two miracles ago – not counting the Chris Paul Miracle of 2011 that a greater power struck down – Kupchak was squeezed in between the giant personalities of future NBA Hall-of-Famers Karl Malone and Gary Payton in an introductory news conference.

That miracle nine years ago gave the Lakers a legendary lineup of Malone and Payton to go with O'Neal and Bryant. Yet it didn't go nearly as well as the Pau Gasol Miracle of 2008 did.

With the Lakers now grouping Bryant, Gasol, Howard and Steve Nash together for a latter-day fearsome foursome, it's worth comparing why one miracle worked and another didn't – and which one this Howard move is more like.

There are a zillion specifics to work out still when it comes to how many post touches Howard will get compared to Gasol or whether Howard is ready to learn from the prodigious work ethics of Nash and Bryant.

The important thing now, though, is the feeling.

And it's one of building something new – not reviving, not saving, not short-cutting.

The Gasol trade built something new, seen in how beyond ready Bryant was in 2008 for something greater than his 81 points against Toronto in 2006 or his 65 points against Portland in 2007. In 2012, Bryant is about to set a new career high in a far more important category than scoring: gratitude.

Just when LeBron James became a champion and Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook seemed poised to get next, Bryant has renewed reason to believe he can win and tie and win again and pass Michael Jordan's six rings.

Positive energy from Bryant, which hasn't carried the Lakers the past two seasons, is going to permeate their world this season. Bryant will be grateful for Nash and Howard – both hungry for their first titles, but more importantly with critical skill sets to make Bryant's life far easier – and might even appreciate still having Gasol with whom to share it.

Bryant is chasing more championships as his career nears its end, yet the real feeling here is fresh – and, despite the egos, team-first.

Nash's spirit and generosity are the best of his generation, and he's going to change the whole way the Lakers play offense. Howard the defender will have everyone else's backs like no other player in the sport. Neither quality has existed in any previous Lakers championship with Bryant. It's impossible not to see how both qualities will make for incredibly powerful connective tissue in bonding a team.

Sure, there could turn out to be true basketball reasons why the Lakers don't win the next NBA title:

Maybe Metta World Peace thinks he's the fifth Beatle, takes too many crazy shots and the Lakers come away regretting that they didn't go the route of including Gasol in the trade so they could also come away with in-his-prime Andre Iguodala to play small forward against James and Durant.

But first comes the feeling.

It's impossible to imagine anyone being more eager to please than this Gasol – always Mr. Nice Guy even amid all the trade speculation, now about to morph into Mr. Sunshine with a legitimately bright future as a Laker again after it seemed all would be lost.

Beyond that, there is no doubting the open hearts that the ever-sweet Nash and the damage-controlling Howard bring to the Lakers. Yes, Malone and Payton wanted to win their first titles very badly also, but it was understood that they were desperately hitching themselves to an already moving wagon driven by the disgruntled Bryant and O'Neal, two greater superstars. (And appropriately, the wagon veered off at the end against a united Detroit Pistons crew far more determined to seize the day.)

Incumbent Lakers Bryant and Gasol need what Nash and Howard are bringing. And if you give it some deeper philosophic thought, it's true that all the things that Bryant isn't great at, Nash is – and the same goes for what Gasol isn't great at but Howard is.

This is the magic potion Kupchak has concocted amid the stale, selfish atmosphere of the past two Lakers seasons.

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